Abram Bergson received his doctorate at Harvard University and is George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Harvard University. During his years as a graduate student, his interest in economics turned from pure theory to the Soviet economy.

Bergson on socialism and personal ethical values,"Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies":

"...While economic merit is of much interest, so too is political merit as manifest above all in the status of democratic political institutions, i.e., due process of law, civil liberties, and public dismissibility of responisible officials t hrough free elections. From that standpoint, socialism, as thus far experienced, hardley scores at all....I have been discussing comparative economic and political merit without explicit reference to my own ethical values. Perhaps I can repair that difi ciency if I explain that in my personal social welfare function (SWF), one of the arguments, with a high value indeed, is a vector representing the status of the diverse institutions of political democracy, i.e., due process of law, etc. For the rest, I still find the oft-maligned principle of consumer's sovereignty to be quite appealing, though not inviolable; which is to say that, in respect of material arguments, my SWF has essentially the well-known individualistic form. In the realm of equity, the re are, I think, recognizable minimum material levels which an economically advanced society should seek to assure for all. I regard it as an egregarious and distressing flaw that such an imperative often fails to be observed. Otherwise, though, egalita rian income redistribution does not seem to me intrinsically very urgent. I recognize, however, that the degree of inequality and how it originates are factors which could affect the viability of democratic political institutions. One's ethical beliefs are apt ot have complex and elusive sources, but my parents came to the United States around the turn of the century as Jewish immigrants from Tsarist Russia. Such a family background seems almost naturally to predispose one to a deep committment to demo cracy and often to an enduring concern for the lot of the under-privileged. My personal SWF probably is best understood in that light."

Works by Abram Bergson:

• The Structure of Soviet Wages
  
• Real Income, Expenditure Proportionality, and Frisch's 'New Methods of Measuring Marginal Utility (Review of Economic Studies)
  
• A Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics (Quarterly Journal of Economics)
  
• Socialist Economics (A Survey of Contemporary Economics)
  
• The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928
  
• Market Socialism Revisited (Journal of Political Economy)
  
• On Monopoly Welfare Losses (American Economic Review)
  
• Managerial Risks an Rewards in Public Enterprise (Journal of Comparative Economics)
  
• Recollections and Reflections of a Comparativist